


smaller pieces

by aliasjacket



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Gratuitous references to food and anime, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28375605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliasjacket/pseuds/aliasjacket
Summary: “It’s insane to me that you know how to cook,” Tony says. “I can’t cook for my life.”“Is that why you’re always stealing my food?” Chan replies.“Okay, you are voluntarily giving me food and accommodating for my dietary needs. You don’t get to call that stealing.”
Relationships: Chan Kaifang & F. Tony Scarapiducci, Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	smaller pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Space Force is not a good show.

It’s only after the whole star debacle when Tony notices how weird Chan is around food. 

Tony’s pulling his phone out of his pocket, checking Twitter, reading POTUS’s new tweet out loud — “Just got the best birthday present ever. Giant hyper star officially named after me” — and he reaches the end and turns out the secretary of defense has totally fucked them over and then — 

Tony realizes that Chan has just cut a slice of cake into six tiny rectangular pieces. 

_Well, okay_ , he thinks. 

Chan is sitting in the middle of the canteen, his back ramrod-straight against the chair. He looks incredibly, ridiculously zen. He looks like he’s ascended beyond this mortal coil and achieved inner peace or something. 

Tony asks, “We did good, right?” 

“We did great,” says Chan softly. He jabs a toothpick into one of his minuscule cake pieces and hands it to Tony. 

Tony studies the cake for a moment. It’s been cut with astonishing neatness. A tasty rectangular prism on a toothpick. He thinks about Chan’s hand on the knife, moving with a surgeon’s precision. He wonders if Chan is also like this in the lab. Calm. Steady. 

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Tony says, “but thank you.” 

*

(“How is it that I’m lactose intolerant but you’re not?” Tony complains. “Aren’t Asian people supposed to be lactose intolerant?”

“Many East Asian people have trouble absorbing lactose, yeah. But I don’t.” Chan eats a piece of cake, looking almost smug. 

“Let me feed this cake to you, then, since you’ll absorb it so easily.” 

“No! What the fuck, Tony?”)

*

He starts noticing Chan more often after that. It’s just because they had spent all that time together, frantically brainstorming potential gift ideas for POTUS. Yeah. They worked together and now he thinks about Chan a little more, and that’s just normal human behavior. 

...well, maybe he starts stalking Chan a little on social media. 

It’s 1 AM. As is custom, Tony is lying in bed and scrolling through his phone instead of sleeping. Staring at a bright phone screen in the dark is probably bad for his eyes, but he stares at phone screens for a living. He exits Twitter and opens up Instagram. He’d found Chan on Instagram weeks ago, but only now does he take a careful look through Chan’s Instagram posts. 

It’s a lot of food and plant pics. Tony scrolls through a bunch of dorky scientific captions about plants. Is Chan part of Botanist Instagram? Is Botanist Instagram even a thing? 

Tony spends a bit more time on the food pics. Chan likes to cook. His cooking is actually kind of impressive. Homemade noodles, surprisingly symmetrical sandwiches. Salmon that’s been garnished with herbs and looks fancy as hell. 

Tony pauses at a photo of some dumplings, which Chan folded by hand for Chinese New Year. The dumplings are folded in all kinds of different patterns. Some of them have folds that look like the edge of a pleated skirt. Some of them are round and pinched in the center. Some of them are shaped like triangles. This is different from cutting cake into bite-sized pieces. This is a whole ‘nother level. 

Tony tries to scroll down and ends up accidentally liking the dumpling photo. He unlikes it immediately and hopes Chan doesn’t notice. 

When it’s almost 3 AM, he puts down his phone and tries his best to fall asleep. 

*

(“Hey, how tall are you, like 5’5?” Tony asks. 

Chan sighs. “5’6, actually.” 

“Oh man, that’s so cute.” 

“Shut up.” 

“Sorry, Chan, can’t hear you from up here. Man, I could use your head as an armrest.” 

Tony tries to do just that, but his arm is promptly slapped away.)

*

Tony spots Chan eating lunch in the dining area. He walks over to Chan’s table, coffee in hand, says “hey-mind-if-I-sit-here” and slides into the seat facing Chan without waiting for an answer. 

Chan is eating some kind of steamed bun thing with a meat filling. He’s cut the bun into symmetrical pieces instead of just biting into it, because that’s who Chan is as a person. 

“What’re you eating?” Tony asks, sipping his coffee. 

“Baozi,” Chan says. 

“Oh, is that what it’s called? Did you make that at home?” 

“Yeah. They’re leftover from yesterday. Don’t worry, they don’t have any lactose.” Chan grabs one of the baozi pieces with his chopsticks and hands it to Tony, as if sharing food with a random coworker is the most natural thing in the world. 

No lactose, so Tony pops the baozi piece in his mouth. Chews, swallows. It’s delicious, as Tony expected. 

“It’s insane to me that you know how to cook,” Tony says. “I can’t cook for my life.” 

“Is that why you’re always stealing my food?” Chan replies. 

“Okay, you are _voluntarily_ giving me food and accommodating for my dietary needs. You don’t get to call that stealing.” 

Chan smiles to himself. They fall into a companionable silence. Tony scrolls through Twitter and finishes the last of his coffee. 

Without really thinking about it, Tony says, “We should hang out outside of work.” 

It’s weird. He can’t remember the last time he invited someone to “hang out.” Usually people didn’t want to spend time with him unless they had to, so he’d kind of given up inviting people to places a while ago. 

“Okay,” Chan says. “When are you free?” 

*

(“Chan, do you watch anime?”

“Just because I’m an Asian man doesn’t mean that I watch anime,” Chan says, preoccupied by the samples he’s studying.

“Okay, but do you?”

Chan looks up from his tiny stained slides of plant cells. “...yeah,” he admits.

“Oh, thank god.” Tony shows Chan a tweet on his phone. “What does ‘dattebayo’ mean?”)

*

Hanging out with Chan is a mistake. Tony realizes that now. 

They’d decided to meet up for coffee at a place Tony likes, and now Chan is sitting across from Tony at a tiny table. Instead of a white lab coat, Chan is wearing a hoodie.

He looks so small. It’s hard to believe that he’s in his thirties. Tony watches Chan’s hands, encircling a cup of coffee. Along with coffee, Chan has ordered a blueberry muffin. He tries to cut into the muffin with the little plastic knife provided by the cafe, but the knife sends crumbs flying everywhere. 

Chan heaves a long-suffering sigh. Then, to Tony’s surprise, Chan picks up his muffin and bites into it. There are crumbs at the corners of his lips. 

Hanging out with Chan is a mistake, Tony realizes, but he’s not ready to verbalize why. 

Instead, he shows Chan a meme on his phone and watches him exhale air out of his nose. 

*

(“So, the meme is asking ‘Is that a JoJo reference?’ in response to media that makes references to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure,” Chan explains. “But now people say it even when the media doesn’t make references to JJBA at all.” 

“Oh, so is it like that thing where people started using the word ‘simp’ in situations that didn’t really call for it?”

“Please elaborate, Tony.” 

“Like, this guy would tweet about how much he loved his wife or whatever, and someone in the replies would be like, ‘simp.’ But you can’t simp for your wife, that’s not the same as donating a hundred dollars to a streamer girl in the hopes that she’ll notice you. That’s your literal wife. You’re already married.”

“Uh-huh. I can see you’re really passionate about this.” 

“It’s my job to be passionate about this, Mr. Space Plants.”) 

*

“I don’t — I don’t understand this at all,” General Naird says, squinting at Tony’s phone. Naird is reviewing his daily tweet; Tony had decided to make a joke about anime this time, in the hopes of gaining clout on Twitter. 

“Is that a — an Asian cartoon?” Naird asks, staring down at the meme Tony has carefully edited for him. 

“ _Japanese_ cartoon, sir,” says Tony. “It’s called anime, and it’s very popular among nerds on Twitter. 

Naird laces his fingers together and gives Tony a look. “Did Dr. Chan put you up to this?” For some reason, he sounds genuinely concerned. 

“Chan isn’t Japanese,” Tony says, confused. 

“Well, he comes from… from around the same area,” Naird says. “And I have my doubts about him. So if he’s threatening you, forcing you to share these pictures of Asian cartoons to — I don’t know — send secret messages to the Chinese —“

 _What the hell?_ “Jesus, no! Chan’s a great guy, love that dude. Also, he’s not a Chinese spy.” Tony pockets his phone and drums his fingers on his knees for a moment. He nods to himself. “No daily tweet today, veto on the anime thing, I hear you.” 

As Tony is getting up to leave, Naird asks, “You and Chan are friends?” 

Tony pauses. Why did that question make him so nervous? 

“Yeah,” he says, his voice coming out quieter than he intended. “Yeah, we’re friends.” 

Yeah. They’re friends. 

*

It’s only after Tony catches himself smiling fondly at a new photo Chan posted on Instagram that he realizes he might have a problem. 

(The photo is of a nian gao, a rice cake, cut into sixteenths.) 


End file.
